


The Little Thief

by kowaiyoukai



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Cute, Fluff, Gen, animal shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-18 22:37:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20646827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kowaiyoukai/pseuds/kowaiyoukai
Summary: A fruit thief has been causing chaos in Riverwood. The citizens have several plans on how to proceed.





	The Little Thief

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on May 23, 2017 as part of a community challenge to create a dragon. I won first place and received the title "Dragon Priest"! Please enjoy!

The residents of Riverwood lived a peaceful life. Usually. They had all the materials they needed to get by. The biggest scandals were how much of a bother Embry made himself outside of The Sleeping Giant Inn, where Stump ran off to when Frodnar and Dorthe were playing, and whether Camilla would finally pick Sven or Faendal. Yet there was one day when everything changed.

Hod was walking home from the lumber mill one night when he noticed an overturned barrel of fruit. The barrel was on its side, still rolling from where it had been knocked over. Several pieces of fruit had been scattered on the ground. Knowing his son well, Hod immediately suspected Frodnar of this trickery.

“Frodnar!” he called out, stomping towards the barrel. “Stop wasting our food!”

As Hod walked closer, he noticed several pieces of fruit were missing, and there were even two that had been bitten into and left behind. Frustrated at this incredible display of careless waste, Hod shouted, “Frodnar! Come back here, you little thief!”

However, Frodnar was nowhere to be found. Hod went back home and found Frodnar with Gerdur, who insisted that their son had been home for a while. Having no proof of the real culprit and not wanting to accuse his son any farther, Hod accepted the explanation and decided it would most likely not happen again.

Yet it did happen again. For a fortnight, there were reports of tipped-over barrels and missing fruit. Frodnar continued to insist it wasn’t him, and eventually everyone was forced to believe him due to the sheer amount of instances that were being reported.

The second person accused of these crimes was none other than the Dragonborn herself. It wasn’t really a surprise. Everyone had seen her sticking her hand into barrels around town, grabbing anything she could from them as if it was a free-for-all and not actual food the citizens were counting on to eat. No one really wanted to bring this up to the Dragonborn’s face, though. She could completely destroy their entire village if she wanted to, and some stolen fruit seemed like a small price to pay. Yet eventually everyone realized that the Dragonborn had not been in Riverwood—not for a long time, possibly more than a year. While a few hypothesized the Dragonborn was sneaking around, using the cover of night to steal their fruit, many more accepted Faendal’s reasoning. “Why would the Dragonborn hide now when she’s been stealing our fruit in broad daylight without even bothering to pretend otherwise all this time?” This question silenced the accusations against her, and so the Dragonborn was crossed off the list of suspects.

Sadly, once Frodnar and the Dragonborn were cleared, there were no other suspects. The idea of Stump was tossed around, but only briefly due to the fact that Frodnar was almost always with him, and, if Frodnar wasn’t at the scene of the crimes, neither was Stump. Still, the incidents continued. 

Delphine claimed two barrels had been stolen from within the same hour. She searched and searched, but could not find the missing fruit anywhere. “What a little thief,” she muttered as she marked off parts of her inventory as lost.

Alvor mentioned he saw an odd flash of color before he heard the crash of a barrel falling. He had run to investigate, but hadn’t seen anyone in the area. Upon closer inspection, he noticed missing fruit, as well. He quickly realized the person must have been small, quick, and agile to escape from sight so fast. "Where'd the little thief go?" he asked the Divines as he searched well into the night.

Dorthe was convinced it was a wild animal. A rabbit was her current best guess. She had heard a strange scuffling noise and gone to investigate. There, she discovered a trail of berries leading into a row of bushes. Dorthe stuck her hand into the bushes, shouting, "C'mere you little THIEF!" Her fingers only just grazed something furless before it scampered away.

One passing guard had reported leaving an apple on the ground next to him as he took a brief rest. When he reached for it moments later, it was gone. "Who's the little thief that stole my snack?" the guard demanded, looking around for the culprit. This incident was blamed on Stump, even though the dog was nowhere nearby at the time, because the guard was unwilling to believe the stories of a mysterious fruit thief plaguing the village of Riverwood.

Embry even reported seeing a piece of fruit moving by itself--a large peach just floating along an inch or two up from the ground--but of course nobody was going to believe that kind of story, least of all from HIM.

Then, one night Sigrid was able to finally get a conclusive answer. She had been out walking and had just decided to head back home when she saw it: a DRAGON! At first, she couldn't believe her eyes. All of her knowledge about dragons said they were huge, ferocious creatures that could easily destroy a village in a single breath of angry destruction magic. This creature was so small, yet it had all the signifying traits of a dragon: the lizard-like form, scales, four claws, and wings. It was red as the fire she feared it breathed and ignored her completely as it investigated some berries. Sigrid quickly waved her hand at Orgnar, who had been passing by on his way to the Inn.

“Orgnar, look,” she quietly demanded, pointing towards the animal. Once Orgnar saw it, she whispered at him, “It’s the little thief!”

“… Is that a dragon?” Orgnar asked. However, he made no attempt to lower his voice. As such, the dragon ran off in a moment, becoming impossible to locate once more. Sigrid and Orgnar discussed the matter as they returned to their separate homes for the night. Could they really be certain it was a dragon they had seen?

News spread of this encounter, and quickly others began to discuss the matter. After two days, a town meeting was called to discuss what was now becoming clear: Riverwood had become home to a baby dragon.

There was an uproar after that, which was to be expected if Sigrid and Orgnar had thought it through at all. In their haste, they had simply decided to share the information with the town instead of keeping it in tiny bits of idle gossip. What if the dragon became a threat? They couldn’t keep the knowledge to themselves.

Yet the townspeople were torn. On the one hand, the dragon had not harmed anyone. Yes, it had stolen fruit, but if they were allowing the Dragonborn to go on doing so, why not this dragon? Some townsfolk suggested it was better to show friendliness towards the dragon rather than risk its wrath. After all, one day it would grow up. They should look to the future protection of their village, not the current annoyance of some missing food.

The other set of townspeople pointed out that they were indeed looking to the future protection of Riverwood. By killing the dragon now, they were ensuring it would never grow up into the monster they all knew it would become. Although this didn’t set well with all of the villagers, the majority ended up voting to destroy the dragon now, before it could do any more damage.

So it was that Hilde, Sven, Ralof, Gerdur, and Hod were chosen to lay a trap for the dragon. They travelled southwest of town to the old cabin where Anise used to live. She hadn’t been seen nor heard from after the Dragonborn passed through, but no one knew what had occurred to make her leave. Still, her cabin was now considered abandoned, having been stripped of everything of value and left alone for months. It was the perfect location to set up their ruse.

The idea was to set out barrels and barrels of fruit—so much fruit that it would be impossible for the dragon to ignore—and leave a trail of fruit from the town to the cabin. Then, once it was a safe distance from Riverwood, Sven would quickly end it with a targeted swing of a sword while the creature was busy stuffing its face. The five of them felt it was a foolproof plan. As for the rest of the village's residents, they were more than willing to let somebody else deal with a dragon in whatever way they saw fit.

It turned out that what Hilde, Sven, Ralof, Gerdur, and Hod had not thought about was the fact that the dragon was fast. Fast enough to disappear from sight after it stole fruit. Fast enough to never be caught unless it wanted to be. And fast enough to escape a sudden attack, run out of the cabin, turn around, open its mouth, and let loose a tiny blaze of fire that the wooden cabin could not survive. The five residents of Riverwood managed to escape the fire before the cabin was destroyed, but only just.

With that plan backfiring as spectacularly as it did, the remaining residents argued for the other idea: letting the dragon live. It wasn't bothering anyone, really. What was the harm in letting it stay? Eventually, the remaining citizens agreed that it would be better to let the dragon live in peace rather than provoking it into attacking them. Nobody could disagree with that.

And so the dragon became a fixture of Riverwood. Citizens began to exchange stories of their experiences with it. There were many aspects of its appearance they could agree on. It was small, so it was assumed to be either a baby or quite young. It had an elongated snout and sported points in various places, leading some to believe it would grow up to have spikes and others to believe it was growing in more scales. It had more of a blunt tip nose, which meant they weren't too concerned about it biting them, although it clearly must have had sharp teeth and claws in order to steal fruit so easily. Obviously, it had wings, but they were still small enough that the dragon usually was seen walking, not flying. Yet there were still some inconsistencies in reports of its appearance. One of the first mysteries they dealt with was what color it was.

"I saw a flash of it in the middle of the day!" Lucan exclaimed to Camilla as he cleaned the counter in the Riverwood Trader. "I swear it was orange!"

"Really?" Camilla replied as she stood over the fire, cooking them lunch. "I heard it was red, like Masser."

Hadvar, who was in the shop inspecting the new wares, joined in the conversation. "No, I saw it yesterday. Green, clear as the river water!"

Faendal, who was in the shop inspecting Camilla, stated, "I saw part of it running away, but I'm certain it was yellow."

Several such conversations occurred with everyone becoming more and more confused. People who had seen it once changed their story about what color it was after viewing it a second time, and sometimes changed it again even after that! Eventually, after careful recording of what it ate and the color it was when it was seen, the residents of Riverwood were able to determine that the dragon's scales were red right after it had eaten, faded to orange after a few hours had passed, and eventually turned a yellowish-green a few hours after that. Although they couldn't time it exactly because the dragon was good at evading them all, it seemed like the cycle was every twelve to sixteen hours. Not a single citizen of Riverwood had any clue why that might be, although now they all understood why it was stealing so much food.

"To stay red!" Frodnar happily exclaimed to a traveling trader. "I think that's when he can breathe fire. Because fire's red, see?" The trader had nothing to say to that, now focused on making a hasty getaway from this seemingly peaceful town with a dangerous secret.

It did seem that the dragon was making its home here, in Riverwood. The residents began to feel comfortable when they saw a flash of bright color or heard a scratching of claws, knowing exactly what it was and that they should expect to be a few pieces of fruit short next time they checked. The only problem, really, was what to call it.

"We can't keep calling the dragon 'the dragon'," Dorthe complained, waving her arms in the air in frustration. "Even Stump has a name!" She stomped her foot and shouted, "It's STUMP!"

"Well then, what do you want to call the little thief?" Alvor asked, humoring his daughter.

"That's it!" Dorthe shouted. "The Little Thief!"

And then she was off, running through town informing everyone she could of the dragon's name. Some residents rolled their eyes at her antics, but more than a few were amused by their previous words coming back around--this time, more affectionately.

"He is a little thief," Delphine repeated as Dorthe ran out of the Sleeping Giant Inn, towards her next target.

"The Little Thief," Orgnar stated with a slight nod. He began sorted through bottles of ale as he ruminated briefly upon it. "You can't say it's wrong."

"No," Delphine agreed. "You can't."

As the weeks passed and The Little Thief became less like an intruder and more like a member of town, there were only two people who could not remain calm about a dragon in their midst. The first was Ralof, who often spoke of training The Little Thief to become a protector of Riverwood.

"Listen, I saw what a full-grown dragon can do at Helgen," Ralof would say to anyone who would listen.

"Sure," Embry stated, right after Ralof had bought him a drink. "You're a... a hero!"

"No," Ralof replied, holding a hand up to stop that train of thought. "I'm a survivor. But I tell you what, if this dragon likes us, and if it makes Riverwood its home, well then..." Ralof spread out his arms, broadly encompassing the entire town. "Why shouldn't it protect its home? Why wouldn't it?"

"Makes sense." Embry drained his glass, looking into it with a small frown.

"Training it would take time. But it's well worth the time if we end up better fortified than the cities," Ralof argued.

He could not be talked out of this--not that anyone truly tried. So Ralof can often be seen tracking down The Little Thief and attempting to train it--showing it where it can safely sleep, how to choose targets, and who it can trust. So far, he has not had much success.

The second person who simply would not be calm about a dragon living in Riverwood was Hilde. “I told you,” she said, crossing her arms in long overdue satisfaction. “I told you I saw a dragon.”

“You didn’t see The Little Thief!” Hadvar shouted, waving his hand at her. “You saw NOTHING!”

"I saw a dragon!" Hilde cried, glaring at him. "And now, you've all seen one too!"

To this day, Riverwood is intent on raising their own dragon. The citizens leave fruit out for The Little Thief, who happily takes it and scampers away to one of its many hiding spots. It’s too soon to determine the consequences of this choice, though one Breton, not willing to take the chance at staying overnight with a dragon wandering just outside, summed up her thoughts quite distinctly as she left town: “It’s their funeral. And their fruit!”

**Author's Note:**

> There were pictures included with the original post, but as I couldn't find correct credits I decided to simply leave them out of this version. Thanks for reading!


End file.
